While gearing up for his debut, 50 released Guess Who’s Back?, a commercially available collection of his early underground work that strikes a balance between the off-the-cuff rhymes of his mixtapes and the more polished assault of his official studio albums. 

 Get Rich or Die Tryin’ had a ton of advance buzz, and it lived up to the hype, becoming a blockbuster. “Wanksta” and “In Da Club” tore up the pop charts, and the album was full of slick, powerful hooks delivered in 50’s steady, laid-back cadence. 

 On The Massacre, 50 leaned too much on his “cuddly thug” persona. His unpolished croon started making more and more appearances, helping him score several more hit singles. But this would be the last time 50’s lover and fighter personas lived comfortably side-by-side. 

 Curtis is an unmitigated disaster. It was released the same day as Kanye West’s Graduation, and SoundScan showed that rap fans in 2007 were definitely more eager to lap up West’s self-introspection than 50’s circa-2003 bullets-and-braggadocio swagger. 

 Before I Self Destruct should have been received as 50’s triumphant comeback record, but not many people paid attention to this no-fanfare, all-meat-no-gristle record. 50 is verbose and aggressive, full of hilarious puns and vivid gangsta-isms, practically bursting with infectious energy.